


before the sun is in the sky

by Sosostris



Series: The River's Destiny [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ursa was not a good mother, but this is just the beginning, lots and lots of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:07:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25425130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sosostris/pseuds/Sosostris
Summary: Ty Lee watches her the whole time in the airship.“There’s more out there than just trust and fear, you know,” she says.
Series: The River's Destiny [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1841596
Comments: 16
Kudos: 125





	before the sun is in the sky

Ty Lee watches her the whole time in the airship.

“There’s more out there than just trust and fear, you know,” she says.

She sounds a little wistful. Azula tries to ignore it. For someone who ran away from home, Ty Lee has absolutely no leg to stand on, to question her own relationship with Father.

(But Ty Lee has always been good at making do without legs to stand on.)

Zuko does not speak to her at all. That’s exactly as it should be, Azula knows.

***

There is a prison at the Western Air Temple—little cells, like a buzzard-wasp nest, hollowed out of the cliffside. When the Water Tribe boy asks incredulously what monks would need a prison for, the Avatar answers sheepishly that not all the nomads were monks.

No one says it, but Azula deduces this must have been the Air Army’s stockade.

The floor of each cell slopes gently downwards, ending a few feet later at open air. There is only one direction for the unwary—or exhausted—prisoner to go. Azula can etch into rock, but she cannot burn it, and she cannot fly—not yet. Though she might stand a chance when the comet comes, she doubts she has until then.

If the Avatar is wise, he will kill her before that, she thinks. It’s no more than what she herself has done.

And if the Avatar is weak, he will kill her before Father’s patience runs out.

***

The chieftain comes in the dead of night, when the moon is high with its evil rays.

He settles down on the other side of the bars, close enough that she could kill him. Azula is grimly amazed that he shows no fear of the prospect.

Perhaps he thinks that she is a silly girl who knows nothing of the world, no older than his own child. He must be a fool, like all his kind. Her surmise is confirmed when he begins prattling.

“Good evening, princess,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep either, after I was captured.”

Cocking her head, Azula tilts her chin at the fatal drop that awaits if she dozes off.

“Right, right.” The chief—Hakoda—looks a little sheepish. “Look, my kids—well, my boy—he doesn’t think it’s fair to lock you up in here either. He’d rather let you out, but you’d have to co-operate.”

 _Co-operate_ , Azula thinks darkly. _Collaborate._ Or is it her father’s favourite order, _Behave_?

It must be how tired she is, she thinks—it has settled deeper into her than just a physical exhaustion—but even fatigue is no excuse for failure, so it must be weakness. But she has carried this secret for so long that it’s an intense relief to watch the savage’s face as the words slip out of her unbidden.

“My mother killed my grandfather. She thought she had to, because he wanted Father to sacrifice Zuko. She always loved Zuko more. I haven’t seen her in six years.”

If he wants her to say things that she means, then what she means is: “This is who I am.”

At the back of her traitorous mind, a voice that sounds like Mother’s says: _Murderers and liars, that’s what you come from._

She dares the chieftain to agree. It’s why she confessed it, after all. But if these are her roots, they’re _Zuzu’s_ , too.

“We’ve always… done what we had to. So,” she spits, “do I sound like I would ever _co-operate_?”

The man’s face is blank. Clearly he already believes the absolute worst of her.

 _Not so different from Mother_ , Azula thinks spitefully.

“Sacrifice,” Hakoda repeats slowly. “Fire Lord Azulon wanted to kill a ten-year-old.”

He looks at her— _looks_ at her, a deep stare, with those frank blue eyes. “And you were eight.”

He’s watching her like he _knows_ her, like he looks at his own children, as though she is anything like that heathen water-witch. It makes her skin crawl. She would claw his eyes out if she could.

Even though he has no grounds to call her anything than _your highness_ , Hakoda says, delusional about their equality, “Azula, most families don’t do that, just yours.”

 _Stop it!_ she thinks, but presses her lips together tightly to keep more weakness from showing.

“I mean, my wife is dead, and you don’t think that _I_ had anything to do with it,” he continues, still holding her gaze, as light and even as if he were asking _jasmine or oolong?_

“No, of course not,” Azula replies her tone just as perfectly pleasant. “My grandpa did it, didn’t he?”

But he doesn’t take the bait; he only nods, and it makes her seethe.

“From what I hear,” Hakoda adds conversationally, “your father seems pretty willing to _sacrifice_ others in his war. His troops. His _children_. He’s not so daring when it’s his own life on the line, is he?”

The rage seems to have dulled her brain— _sloppy_ , Azula chides herself again, pressing sharp nails into her palms—so that the lesson drilled by her childhood tutors returns only from a long way off.

“True power is the divine right to rule,” she recites, as haughtily as she can in rusty shackles. “The Fire Lord _is_ the nation. Our subjects’ lives are his. We are _all_ his children.”

There it is again: something she cannot name, sparking in Hakoda’s clear gaze.

He is silent for a while, and she thinks _that’s it_ —he’ll leave her—she’s won.

Then he says, “He thinks you’re his subject, too, princess. His general, maybe. But he wouldn’t die for you—for any of you—like a father should.” _Like I would for mine_ , his steady eyes add.

After delivering this drivel, Hakoda bows in _must_ be mockery, and slips away before Azula can gather herself.

Ridiculously, all she can think of is turtleducks, and how the chief’s dead wife burned for her daughter, and how Mother went to the pyre only for Zuko.

***

Azula falls asleep at some point, her fingers wrapped tightly around the bars of the cell to keep the rest of her from slipping down the cliffside into oblivion. When she finally cracks her eyes open, it’s already noon ( _sloppy, so sloppy_ , burning like a mantra in her).

The chieftain is nowhere in sight, but his idiot son has taken his place, holding a bowl of congealed rice porridge that looks like chicken-pig slop but makes her stomach growl anyway.

“Brunch?” Sokka says, only slightly muffled. That is when she notices the truly hideous false beard plastered to his face, and the red singlet, and, spirits help her, _what in the world_ is he wearing.

“Hello, princess,” he continues cheerily. “I heard you could do with my services! The name’s Fire—Wang Fire—and I’ve got a pretty good reputation around these parts as a therapist.”

Azula thuds her head gently against the stone wall.

**Author's Note:**

> Of all the things that I took away from _A Song of Ice and Fire_ , it _would_ have to be the Eyrie’s creepy “sky cells.”
> 
> The title is still from _Hamilton_ (“Ten Duel Commandments”).
> 
> And the concept for this fic is all because Iroh dared to say, “Evil and good are always at war inside you, Zuko… Because of your legacy, you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and the Fire Nation.” Meanwhile, there I am, watching indignantly, all _Doesn’t the boy have any relatives? Like, say, a sister? Whom you weren’t in the least concerned about?_ Gosh.


End file.
